Carlos Nascimento Nascimento থেকে New Cassel, NY, USA
Set in an alternate universe (book came out in 2008 and is set in 2009) where McCain is the President of a US under constant terrorist attack and the war in Iraq is both worse and more technologically advanced, Shooting War follows an independent blogger turned mainstream journalist. Except he isn't a journalist at all. He researches nothing, is told where to be and simply points his camera at things happening and gets renoun somehow. But the problem with this book isn't the passive protagonist (though it is annoying), it is in the painful caricatures, the long winded speeches and the lazy satire. I was honestly amazed that one of the writers is a journalist, given how painfully unaware this book seemed to be. That this is meant to be a critique of the media shows how deep the problem is--even the critics are uninformed, motivated by painfully partisan beliefs and incapable of understanding subtlety and nuance. Further, the narrative is very herky jerky, moving in time, location and logic in a way that makes little sense, as if entire sections were removed at the last moment and the seams couldn't be stitched in a logical manner. The art is sometimes strong, often times mediocre and sometimes terrible. The meshing of photos with art are particularly gruesome affairs, with no seeming logic behind when a scene is rendered or reproduced, and the integration of the effects is laughable at best. It makes the book come off as a print equivalent of B-movie special effects. It's a shame, really. This book has a lot going for it, but it falls in on itself.